Shadows
by sifuXANA
Summary: Who is the Blue Spirit? His actions and motivations are too complex to call him traitor. Is he a thief, a villain, a prankster? Does he even know what he is? Zuko-centric oneshot. Suggestions and reviews appreciated!


_Hello! This story is just an idea I've had for some time. I loved the episodes that had the Blue Spirit in them and thought I'd write a fic about it. It needs a bit of revising...and a new title, so it would be great if everyone could leave me a review with some criticism. It would be cool to listen to that tinkly music they played for the Blue Spirit while you read this, but I figure that would get annoying after a while. So...I hope you like it!  
_

_**Disclaimer:** I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender._

_**/./././**_

Lithe and sinuous, a silent figure slips through the empty market stalls, too liquid to be human. The darkness penetrates every corner, and the figure dances through it like shadow is his element. During the day this place is a mess of confusion and noise. Now it has been hollowed out.

With a sudden glint, twin swords slice through the ocean of blackness. Carving the atmosphere. Shaping the stillness. Tonight, the figure has no aim. Just a desire to breathe the air of the city through a different face.

A flash of blue grinning mask and then nothing.

Who is the Blue Spirit? His actions and motivations are too complex to call him traitor. Is he a thief, a villain, a prankster? Does he even know what he is?

The figure always moves with graceful determination. But his appearances, his goals, are always irregular. And certainly a different person lurks behind the mask…

/./././

Zuko lights the four candles with one finger, then closes his eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Feel the fire coursing through your veins…and only you can make it appear. Feel the power, but learn the restraint.

His eyes open.

One sees the world in crisp clarity, every bit of hate and rage amplified to a painful degree. Through the other everything is undefined, unclear. There is only gray, a complicated and nonjudgmental color, and sometimes he can't afford to use this side of his sight. He prefers the definitions of good and evil, of black and white. Because otherwise he would have to think, and thinking only hurts him.

(A whisper: {It is through his scarred eye that he senses the other side of his world.})

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

In that moment a thirteen-year-old boy, dark hair but a tinge of light to his soul, saw nothing but the treachery of his own father's fist. But in the days that follow, a sharp stinging procession, he wants to melt through the floor. He wants another soul to absorb his, so that he can distance himself from the wreckage that has suddenly become his life.

Zuko looks at his hands. They are warm and solid, and he knows that there will never be any escape. The word comes to him then—honor—and his hands drop back to his sides and he understands that will be what he really chases.

_For the next three years, while he never fully heals._

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

The shaded water envelops the mask, pulling it down slowly to the mysterious worlds beneath. The blue spirit grins all the way down. And even though it's gone, even though his hands are empty, that face still haunts him, and all he can do is hope that he will someday forget.

/./././

He can't have it.

He has to face his shame alone.

/./././

He longs to see with the anonymous eyes of the Blue Spirit. Enveloped in his mask, he doesn't have to take sides. He wants to see objectively but his emotions threaten to overwhelm him in a tidal wave, claiming his body with the force of fire, the sea.

"Zuko!" Uncle commands, stern, urgent, gentle somehow. But Zuko can't listen to wisdom anymore. The fat glowing crystals of the cave threaten to blind him with their luminescence. Uncle is barely visible.

Azula just stands, smirking at him like she knows what he will choose. Unwillingly Zuko remembers the day of his eighth birthday, when his mother planned a scavenger hunt. She dug clues into the ground with a fallen branch, and hid a basket of Zuko's favorite sweets in a bush by the turtleducks' pond, one of his favorite places. But Azula was too clever. While he was still stuck on the first clue, trying to figure out what it directed him to, his sister darted secretly from one to the other. She was already smoothing out the clues and reproducing them elsewhere, leading him farther and farther from his treat. Finally he stopped, baffled, tears threatening to fall. He was a sensitive child. "Can't you find your way?" She teased, while he just stood there. His eyes moved from one clue to another. The path was nonsensical. He couldn't find his way.

Here, in this cavern, Zuko has a sickening feeling that all the clues have already been smoothed over.

He still can't find his way.

His uncle speaks and Azula speaks but he is lost somewhere in the middle in a moment of vast silence. Caught between two dragons, the dragons of his dreams. The edges blur. He wants to fly off, to leave them to fight with each other—_leave me out of this_. But of course he can't. It's about him.

For the first time, Zuko wants to escape his destiny, whichever destiny it may be. If he could only find the path by himself.

Something whispers in his ear. The crystals glint viciously. The decision he will make, he will regret for a very long time.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

Years later he will wish he had burned it. As long as it still exists, it still calls to him, a murky emotion that finds its way deep into his mind. Maybe it's decaying slowly at the bottom of the lake. Maybe squirrel-fish are swimming through it. Maybe it will remain there for as long as he lives, and the uncertainty tugs at him. There are times when that last image comes to him, sudden and unwanted, and he has to hide his face.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

"Prince Zuko?" a voice calls, half-merry and just slightly tentative. It's Uncle. His own uncle calls him by the title of Prince—he feels detached, but only for a moment.

The mask makes no noise as it slides beneath his mattress. "I'm resting, Uncle." Zuko's tone is gruffer than he intended. Breathe.

A suggestion having to do with tea floats, hazily, through the door, and Zuko shakes his head. "No," he replies. Short. Simple. Something hollow is luring him from beneath the bed. He stares at his hands but his eyes are drawn elsewhere.

/./././

Zuko bites his lip furiously against the wind. The dark is melting through, cold filtered light hitting him like a thousand arrows, his own body betraying his need. "No one can take this from me," he whispers, and it comes out in an angry hiss. Every time he speaks the kindness leeches out. His intentions seem cruel, murky. He can't control it anymore.

Ahead, a grove of trees brace themselves against the strong gusts that tear leaves from their branches. Zuko clutches the edges of his mask protectively. In a matter of days the trees will be stripped. But his grip is tight, and he will survive, and he _will_ return home and he _will_ triumph and he _will_—

There goes Uncle again, planting doubt into his mind. Zuko's frustration surfaces in a low growl. He can't think about himself anymore, so he lets the Blue Spirit absorb him completely, translate his sharp rage into something more suitable, more stealthy.

Buildings sprout from the mist, and his cloaked gaze turns their way. His mission, his release. He is anonymous, and he can transform himself as easily as a fistful of clay. The fire in his veins finds a different way out.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

A vendor on the street is calling out his wares in a loud voice, and Zuko slides over, furtively examining mangoes and kumquats. He's not sure what he's doing here. It's his break time from the tea shop and ordinarily he goes in the back for a cup of jasmine tea with Uncle, but today he felt suffocated.

He told Uncle he was going out, sharply, and left.

His movements are stealthy and he catches himself, forces himself to move more like a regular person would. Instantaneously the vendor catches his eye. "Papayas are half off today," he boasts. "Best papayas in Ba Sing Se!"

Zuko reaches for one but feels the vendor's gaze lock onto his scar. So he leaves.

He doesn't know how to be in the market. He doesn't know how to act. All he knows is how to blend, slyly, how to move like he's liquid. He doesn't know how to just be.

Zuko stares at his hands. They can't disappear. But he knows the closest thing.

A few coins clank in his pocket—he will not use them today. He will go back to the tea shop and wait for the night, when he can breathe again.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

In the first dream, he's moving through the streets, a quick shadow in an empty city. But suddenly, the image—the strange blue grin, distorted by the waves—flashes through his mind and suddenly he's exposed. A thousand rays of sun cut straight through him and he runs. Though he knows that it will never matter how far.

He closes his eyes and melts back into the real world, but only briefly.

/./././

He's on his own.

He can't have it.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

Suddenly he is frozen on the bow of the ship, the wind locking him into place. He has never felt so exposed, not since...not since he was a different person, his eyes filled with tears against the flames of his father's hand.

There is a movement behind him and his body stiffens. "Loosen up," the familiar voice says, her voice poison-tinged, like marble.

"What's the matter, Zuzu?" she says coyly, coiling up to his side. She's a snake. Always has been, always will be. Is this what he's fallen into? A snake pit, a trap? She seemed so sincere before. He doesn't want to believe he was wrong.

His throat is closed up. "It's been a long time," he manages. Every nuance of the air brushes against his face. He doesn't want to be looked at suddenly. He wants to disappear again, into the shadows like he always does.

(And yet around his father he wants to shine with the light of a thousand suns. He wants his father to look at him with anything but the scorn and disdain he has always done)

The ship doesn't stop. He doesn't disappear. He looks down at his hands. They are as solid as ever.

"It certainly has," says Azula. Impulsively he wants to start his old chant again, "Azula always lies", although she hasn't said anything so far that he could mistake for lying. He forces himself to accept this—and yet he still shivers at her touch. What is he sailing into? Will his father forgive him? He knows, with more conviction than he's ever felt for anything in his life—that the Avatar is not dead. That the Avatar lives.

That if his father found out—all would be lost.

He shivers. Internally he sees the flash of blue. The steady, subtle jingle, the mysterious slight movements. The mask. It must be half rotten by now, decaying in the bottom of the lake. He wants no part of the decay. He wants to thrive. And yet how can he do that when all he longs for is something that will never be whole again?

His hand moves up to his scar and Azula laughs, harsh and cold. He will never, never relax. Not even as his old alter-ego, and suddenly everything feels so hopeless. The cold wind, Azula's disguised taunts, the slim border of his homeland: every movement is a sinister allegory. Yet he can't force himself to look away.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

Once Zuko was able to escape. He fled from the life that had been thrust upon him with little more than clothes of black and a new disguise, and in those moments he was convinced that he would never return. He was prepared to abandon his uncle and his nation and even the destiny he thought he wanted for so long.

But his life caught back up to him, like it always did.

And so he returned.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

Everything stops instantaneously in Zuko's mind. He struggles to comprehend Iroh's words, the wash of fading afternoon sun, the faces that swim in the thick silence. Why does he have these moments? These little specks of time where everyone stares towards him, expecting him to do something amazing and heroic, while all he can do is gape.

He's always been fascinated with his destiny. The promise of becoming Fire Lord someday—of making his father proud—was constantly weighing on him, blocking out any light that filtered through. But now he's better in the background, almost a quiet monk himself.

His own people hate him, call him a traitor and many other names. He can't go back out into the spotlight. He can't.

The moment breaks. Zuko looks down at his hands.

/./././

"Zuko," Katara says, reassuringly, "if there's one thing I've learned about you, it's that you are nothing like your father."

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

The palace is cold sometimes: Zuko does get lonely. His tasks as Fire Lord are a burden he often feels he is drowning in. With his friends on diplomatic missions or visiting their parents, his advisors crowding in like a herd of angry komodo rhinos, the occasional radical citizen opposed to his rule, Zuko always thinks back to the first time, lying alone on the hospital bed. The first feeling of longing to melt into himself, to disappear like a cutout figure from his own life.

He is happier now. There are times when he shakes him many assistants off his tail and sprints to the training room, where he firebends as naturally and as beautifully as the two dragon masters taught him.

_A red dragon and a blue dragon, winding through his feverish mind._

Zuko is growing older. He forces himself to remember what he's been through, all that he's seen and done, every last word he's regretted saying. But he's not the same person he was back then. He no longer constantly shifts and changes; he is no longer the enigma that could only be encompassed by a tightly grinning mask. Occasionally he wishes for the freedom he had back then, the freedom he didn't know what to do with, the freedom he discarded for an unachievable dream. Yet, this is where he is now. And this is what he will keep.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

_When he put on the mask the shame and the pain and the hurt and the anger dissipated into a smaller part of him, into flimsy emotions that could blow like smoke through his muscles and guide his cloaked movements. _

_But tonight—_

/./././

_Somewhere miles away but not far enough, Aang turns in his sleep, dreaming of his shaking hands removing a mask as the smoke swirls around him._

/./././

_Zuko wouldn't admit it. Sometimes he gets the feeling that everything is all wrong, that somehow he's fighting against himself. _

_Suddenly, it couldn't be stronger. _

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

He can't have it.

It's not that easy.

/./././

\.\.\.\

/./././

Yelling at his uncle. Breathing with the flames. Challenging his father. Looking towards his country. Looking away from his country. Screaming at the sky. Chasing the Avatar. Stealing an ostrich horse. Serving a cup of tea. Offering up his knife. Demanding news of his mother. Demanding forgiveness. Demanding a second chance.

A cold blue shell, turned upward in his palms.

/./././

_Staring at his hands._

/./././

Who is Zuko?

He is more than a mask.


End file.
